Approval of Previous Minutes —

Approval of September 6, 2022, minutes.  Kristin Villa made a motion to accept the minutes.  Justin Blumenstiel seconded the motion.  None opposed.  Minutes approved.

Faculty Senate Report

Last week was the KBOR meeting.  KU is the lead this year, so Nate is chairing the council on faculty senates. Much of the meeting was devoted to the Emporia State situation.  At breakfast on Thursday, they had already been given approval for the plan.  Nate was under the impression that there would be a little bit of study before implementing.  Emporia State has moved along the termination notices.  One of the Regents members is willing to talk with KU faculty senate. 

Tomorrow, there is mandatory meeting at 8 a.m. for communication from the provost. The meeting is for deans, provosts, and leadership across the campus.  We will keep you posted. 

At the last meeting we discussed giving FRPR the task of evaluating the status of non-tenured faculty on campus, mainly with departmental representation.  Do they feel included?  They will check with chairs and directors.  They’ll work with Chris Brown’s office.  They’ll report back in January. Once we have information, we’ll figure out what to do with it.

COACHE results are still tied up in the provost office. Who should have access to the raw data is still being discussed.  We are expecting to come out soon about that process. 

University Senate Report

She wrote an email today about the Holocaust certificate discontinuance.  She hopes to send out a clarification email.   This comes after spending the summer advocating for Jewish Studies degrees.  There weren’t many students in this certificate, and this should allow these students to channel into other degrees in program.  We have the formal request on the website now.  Sam Brody said that people are not aware that the programs and degrees are all fine, and that it is just the certificate that is being discontinued.

Ani is hopeful we can send the clarification notice.  Ani Kokobobo reported the provost came to the Faculty Senate meeting and we are working on shared governance.  Everyone has heard the news about the human remains in Lippincott Hall, which is disturbing.  DEIB interviews are scheduled this week and next.  We should try to attend and give feedback.  We’re trying to populate committees.  We’re waiting on an email for dependent tuition assistance this week. 

New Business —

Wint Winter, Board of Regents, reached out to us and volunteered to talk to us about Board of Regent’s willingness to reinstate a strength in tenure at KU. What they are doing at Emporia State, they don’t plan to do at any other institution.  Nate has mixed feelings about this.  He opened this for discussion. Do we want to take other actions about Emporia State? 

Will people appreciate to hear from someone from the Board?   A board member will not be at liberty to talk about the opinions of the board though I’d be interested in hearing their side of what happened at Emporia State, maybe not useful but curious.   The impression is that no one wants more of this.  What happened at Emporia situation was in a response to a financial situation.  It was an unpleasant situation. 

There was more discussion if there should be a notice of support by Faculty Senate for Emporia faculty.  They didn’t have public presidential search.  A stand-alone email message might be difficult, as we have a difficult time sending messages.  Maybe a statement from faculty senate would be beneficial.  What other messages should we include it with?  We can figure out the language.  Two points to communicate: solidarity and reassurance to KU faculty.  It’s important to keep the relationship open and functional with the Board of Regents.  The language we use is important.  We have missed the window of opportunity for a stand-alone message about Emporia.  We can put it in with other messages. Sam will send language to be included with other general shared governance messages. What Sam will say is what is happening there is essentially saying there is a lack of faith in shared governance.  Faculty were cut out of discussions at Emporia by workforce management policy.  It’s more about who gets to be part of making decisions.  Shared governance is about bringing perspectives to decisions to be made.  They could have done it through program discontinuance. 

They’re saying that faculty at Emporia were invited to participate, starting in January, yet didn’t attend. Yet, faculty may not have known that new options were on the table.  We’re not sure about the messaging, not having seen the emails that were sent.    Faculty did have options to attend.  It did not follow the spirit of shared governance.  Shared governance is also showing up and giving feedback.  Sam Brody will write a paragraph and we will include it in the list of success stories.

Next, the group discussed if an offer to Winter should be extended.  Simon Atkinson will be at the next meeting and Nate said he hopes to strengthen shared governance with research decision making.  They decided that Winter could speak for 5 minutes and then Q&A for 30 minutes. Atkinson will have an hour.  Nate explained that Winter would like to talk about protecting tenure at KU.  We could advertise this meeting more.  Is Winter clear he is just one representative of the whole Board?  Winter is very clear that this is his opinion.  The group was in favor.  

Justin Blumenstiel moved that we move into a closed session.  Betsy Barnhart seconded the motion. None opposed.